Current Mechanical Harvesting Systems

Tractor Drawn Canopy Shake

The tractor drawn canopy shaker (T-CS), manufactured by Oxbo, utilizes a shaking head identical to the shaking
unit on the self propelled CCSC. Shaker heads penetrate the canopy and vibrate up
& down and side to side to remove fruit. During the 2004-05 season, a T-CS shook
fruit to the ground and then utilized a hand crew to gather the fruit into traditional
10-box tubs. A field truck or goat would then dump the tubs and transport the fruit
to the bulk trailers. A T-CS system travels between 1 and 2 mph down the row. Its
daily use, however, is constrained by the availability of workers to pick-up the
fruit.

A big advantage of a T-CS system over its self-propelled counterpart is that
trees do NOT have to be skirted or grown within long rows of uniform sized trees.
Since harvest workers do need ladders, labor productivity is improved by at least
2 fold (between 20-30 box/hr). In trees that yield between 3 and 3.5 boxes/tree,
performance statistics for a T-CS average: